a very sad story....

[captainrick]

You know... I thought after over 30 years, when i went through this same crap in high school, maybe we were getting past it... maybe tolerance and acceptance were becoming more universal.... I guess i was wrong..

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/...8335&page=1

hugz all...

Rick

[Mountain Dude]

You know... I thought after over 30 years, when i went through this same crap in high school, maybe we were getting past it... maybe tolerance and acceptance were becoming more universal.... I guess i was wrong..

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/...8335&page=1

hugz all...

Rick

Younger adults these days seem to be much more tolerant and understanding. Those students 8 through 12 still seem to have some students that thrive at being bullies. It seems to be peer want-to-be butt heads conflicting with the reasonable mass of students. By the time college comes everybody seems to snap out of it.

Teaching tolerance and understanding needs to start during their first year of school (k-12) and school administrations need to have a zero tolerance of bully mentality.

These things should NOT be happening!! PERIOD!!!

[DesDownunder]

You know... I thought after over 30 years, when i went through this same crap in high school, maybe we were getting past it... maybe tolerance and acceptance were becoming more universal.... I guess i was wrong..

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/...8335&page=1

hugz all...

Rick

Rick, I am as saddened as anyone by this report. I thank my mum that she gave me the courage to survive the bullying of my own school years.

In those days of course it was a toss up which was worse; the other kids or the teachers. One slightly, brighter note is the fact that there is an outcry in the community about bullying, it is being reported in the media and that would never have happened 50 years ago.

Change takes time, and of course it shouldn't when such obvious infringements of a child's rights, of an individual's human rights are so blatantly being disregarded and violated. I am afraid we are living in a time when we must be vigilant in protecting the freedoms that have been fought for, over so many millennia and for which we continue to strive to maintain.

The trick is that we must be even more vigilant that we do not become the intolerant, savage, unthinking and barbaric minds we must oppose in order to sustain and expand the freedoms of our individual human rights. Those freedoms, those rights, are in grave danger form the barbarians at the gates, unfortunately some of the barbarians are on our side of the fence.

We may pay for our freedom, and for the freedom of future generations with our blood, but we must never pay by surrendering our humanity, our compassion, no matter that we suffer with our blood soaked tears; even because of those tears.

I cannot help but consider that he who gives up his compassion for freedom, deserves neither. (with apologies to Benjamin Franklin.)

[Paul Schroder]

Sometimes it takes a bit of old fashioned "shame" to convince people to do the right thing. I'd like to see the school forced to place a large sign on their front lawn that says... "Parents be advised - the administrators and teachers of this school tolerate harassment and bullying within the student body." They would then have to prove that they have taken effective steps to control bullying before they would be allowed to remove the sign.

[Tanuki Racoon]

A complete waste. The bully and teacher should be punished. I bet they have no remorse and don't get what they did was wrong.

[The Pecman]

Horrible story. I wish the guys who did the bullying could be punished in some way. At the least, they should have to sit across the table from the dead kid's parents and made to see the effects of what they did.

The only way the school will change their policies is if the parents sue the schools and win. I'd hit them with a wrongful death lawsuit and just say that "the school cultivated an atmosphere of hate and violence," turned a blind eye to bullying, and did nothing to protect the kid. As my partner (ex-lawyer) tells me many times, an institution like a school "has a duty of care to protect and ensure the safety" of anybody under their roof. They obviously failed here.

Stories like this typically have three endings: the first is, the bullied kid kills himself. The second is, the bullied kid goes nuts and shoots up the school and goes to jail. The third is, the bullied kid manages to survive, but winds up neurotic and damaged. (There's also a fourth, where they wind up writing stories for Awesomedude, but that goes without saying.)

[Bruin Fisher]

I survived (damaged but alive!) the bullying at school from pupils and teachers, and expected that after escaping the school system I would be able to put all that behind me.

However some years later I witnessed serious bullying in the workplace. On a training course, classroom environment, the instructor was in the habit of picking on a hapless victim and then encouraging the rest of the class to join him in haranguing the poor man, asking him all the most difficult questions and then laughing at him for getting the answers wrong. In addition he deliberately taught certain things that weren't true, and nobody dared challenge him for fear of getting the same treatment.

I was in the happy position of being a know-it-all (100% in the final exam) so I could report this from a position of strength. And I had the man hauled over the coals. I could so easily have been the victim, though.

More recently I see women being harrassed by men, boosting their own egos by belittling or embarrassing timid women. Bullying is endemic but I have hopes for the current generation of children - those I talk to seem to be much more tolerant and aware. I hear them talking together and mentioning something as being 'inappropriate' - a word that didn't feature in my vocabulary at their age.

[Bruin Fisher]

(I duplicated my post - dummkopf!)

[DesDownunder]

(I duplicated my post - dummkopf!)

(I duplicated my post - dummkopf!)

If you hadn't told us we would never have known.

Anyway, Bruin, it was worth saying twice.

I have been on the receiving end of both men and women being the work place bullies.

There is little doubt in my view, that bullying is the province of people who suffer an inferiority complex; gender itself is not the issue, though the bully may make the victim feel like it is.

The bully is reacting to his fear of a perceived threat to his immaturity. What constitutes that threat and who the bully blames for it may not be rational or real. The purpose of bullying is to diminish the self worth of the chosen, most likely innocent, victim. By this means the bully's own lack of self-respect is replaced with a sense of purpose, of justification, culminating in the acquisition of power over others. The fact that the bully's inferiority complex still exists, even being reinforced by the results of the bullying, means that the bullies must continue to find new victims in order to sustain the authority and extend their sense of power.

It is little wonder that bullies (particularly in management), are known as "little Hitlers," because the Nazi penchant for authoritarian control, is based on the methods, rational cowardice and attitude of the bully. Yet Nazism is merely an extreme of bullying; other more subtle forms of bullying pervade many areas of our cultures.

Bullying is in effect the exploit of an antisocial personality disorder, (sociopath or psychopath.)

It should be no surprise that managers are selected on the criteria of 'getting the job done' by doing 'whatever it takes.' You might just as well place an advertisement for a bully, a psychopath.

I am always disappointed when I see political correctness being employed as a tool for bullying people into what is considered acceptable behaviour without any recourse to sophisticated consideration of what use to be called common sense. I detest being bullied by a sales person, or by the manipulation of a commercial.

Bullying is a deep seated problem with more manifestations than just the school yard or class room.

[JamesSavik]

The only problem is that everybody can be a thoughtless asshole from time to time.

Nice people just won't make a career of it.

[DesDownunder]

Thanks James, that is well said.

[Drewbie]

Very sad story, I wish someone was out for that boy who told him he was worth it.

Maybe just maybe the kids who bullied him now have to live with it for the rest of their lives.